I am in the gym, holding a fine metal sliver, dodging and parrying and thrusting it at my opponent. My foil doesn’t glint in the sun as in a fairytale, but it’s dull and quick like a serpent searching for a cool hole in the desert. When I find that hole -- a gap in my opponent’s defense -- I thrust my serpentine head in to score a point. “Touch,” she calls as she places two fingers on her abdomen. 3-2, and we’re playing to five touches.  Whoever wins this bout will have the moment’s glory and a patch of rewarding sunlight on the waxed wood at their feet... my mind drifts away from yesterday’s bout. Now I am back in the everyday phase of my moon, homework sheets and history readings and heroes’ journeys and French poems. When will the homework end? I sometimes wonder, but I don’t fully dislike it. Amidst piling schoolwork is fencing class, and the occasional bout that I win. When I do make a touch against my opponent, my mind fills with a dreamy cloud of excitement. “Ready? Fence!” are the cordial but firm words from my opponent every time we make a touch. My mask is sweaty and my bangs are sticking to my forehead. The sun and heat fills my shirt and sticks to my chest protector like a waterlogged leaf after a storm... but I don’t want to stop. Fencing is fun, spiking, dodging, thwacking, twirling, deceiving, waving, skimming, pricking, poking, sliding onto my opponent’s chest, my target, the answer to a satisfactory breath after minutes of none at all from intense concentration, very deep. Because now I am fencing, and I can think of nothing else.